Tag Archives: senior care

Elder Care Skills for Family Caregivers

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Skills Needed for Advocating for your Loved One:

Educate yourself regarding your loved ones illness/and or disability.
Communicate efficiently and succinctly with healthcare professionals.
Recognize you are a healthcare consumer and deserve quality healthcare.
Understand you are an important member of the healthcare team.
Give input and ask questions.
Pick your battles and don’t sweat the small stuff.
Realize that sometimes it is the squeaky wheel which produces results.

We all go through varying stages of emotions when our lives have been transformed by becoming a family caregiver. Research has shown there are five stages of grief: denial, anger, bargaining, depression and acceptance. All of these emotions are part of the framework which makes up our learning to adjust and cope to our life as a family caregiver while we watch someone we love struggle with chronic illness.

On occasion some become sufficiently angry and search for ways to deal with their anger by channeling it into a constructive endeavor and caring enough to become activists for a much larger cause. Sometimes we will find the energy and passion not only to advocate for our loved one’s well-being but for all family caregivers.

New Jersey’s Expert Home Care for Elders and Seniors provides care for your aging loved ones since 1984. Please call us when your loved one needs help – 800-848-2336.

New Jersey Elder Care Planning

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New Jersey’s Expert Home Care for Elders and Seniors provides care for your aging loved ones since 1984. Please call us when your loved one needs help – 800-848-2336.

The Process of Long Term Care Planning by Thomas Day

The Seven Steps of the Planning Process

Understanding the natural progression of long-term care and the resources available to help can be an invaluable asset to a family or spouse who are currently providing care or someday in the future, may eventually have to provide help for a loved one. We call this process long term care planning. It involves:

Understanding the Process of Planning

Understanding Care Settings

Understanding Government Long-Term Care Programs

Knowing Who to Contact for Help

Creating Sources of Funding to Pay for Services

Using Strategies to Preserve Assets

Creating a Long Term Care Plan

New Jersey Home Care – Helping Senior Clients Get Quality Sleep

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New Jersey’s Expert Home Care for Elders and Seniors provides care for your aging loved ones since 1984. Please call us when your loved one needs help – 800-848-2336.

Q. Senior clients tell me they have difficulty sleeping. What can they do to get a better night’s sleep?

A. No matter what your age, getting the proper amount of sleep is essential to physical health and emotional well-being; it is just as important for seniors as it was when they were younger.

Difficulty getting to sleep and staying asleep (insomnia) is a frequent concern for seniors. Levels of growth hormone, which promotes deep sleep, and melatonin, which regulates sleeping and waking cycles (circadian rhythm), decrease with age.

Other causes of sleep difficulties may include certain health conditions, medications, consumption of alcohol or caffeine and a decrease in bladder size. A reduction in activity and exercise levels, not spending enough time in the sun, psychological stress, and sleep disorders such as Restless Leg Syndrome (RLS), may also be challenges to getting and staying asleep.

Try the following suggestions for a good night’s sleep:

  • Keep to a regular sleep schedule, every day; even on weekends.
  • Expose yourself to sunlight. At least two hours of bright sunlight each day increases the body’s production of melatonin.
  • Separate yourself from noises. Try earplugs.
  • Adjust your bedtime to concur with when you feel like going to bed.
  • Develop bedtime rituals. Try a relaxing bath.
  • Check with your doctor to see if your medications may be interfering with your sleep.
  • Take care of your psychological health. Try meditation or relaxation techniques.

For more information check out the following; http://www.helpguide.org/life/sleep_aging.htm and http://www.statssheet.com/articles/article29583.html.

Senior Long Term Planning – Wills or Living Trusts

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Planning for home care in New Jersey can be difficult for most seniors. Deciding “how” to distribute your assets is another challenge for most aging Americans… Expert Home Care NJ has helped many seniors figure out “how to live independently at home and plan for the future when you can no longer care for yourself”. Call us when you need assistance with homemaker needs at (800) 848-2336.

Let’s talk about Wills or Living Trusts – most NJ elders and seniors cringe when thinking about which one is best for their assets.

The first answer to think about is who will get your money, your property, or even your favorite diamond ring or heirloom when you’re gone? We don’t like to dwell on these questions. The evidence? Few Hispanics have the main documents used to distribute property after death: only one in four has a will, and one in fivehas a living trust.

Yet if you decide early on exactly who gets what could relieve your loved ones of a the burden. After all, if you don’t decide, the government will. And you don’t want to go down that road!

Many seniors consider a will the best tool when making their wishes known to relatives. And in their opinion, the will is the best tool to carry out those wishes. That may be true in many cases. But according to some experts, a living trust, alone or with a will, offers a better solution.

New Jersey Senior Vacation Planning

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When planning for a vacation, most seniors don’t put much thought into it. It’s our goal at Expert Home Care to help New Jersey Seniors and Elders travel safely and with care. Please call us when needing help at home (800) 848-2336.

Consider your travel style.

  • Don’t end up doing something you don’t really want to do. Does the thought of a 10-day road trip bring a smile or a grimace?
  • Is 17 hours on a plane to Australia blissful or stressful?
  • Are you interested in a destination vacation or would you rather keep moving? Do you prefer swimsuits and shorts to regulation cruise wear like gowns and tuxedos?
  • Check your passport. If traveling out of the country, be sure your passport is current. It will take at least six weeks to get a new one.
  • Create an itinerary. Leave a copy of your complete travel information with friends or family.
  • Be informed. The Internet is full of sites that offer unlimited information for travelers. Take virtual tours on the Web of places you want to visit, and get the most current travel guides to those areas. There are many companies that specialize in senior travel.
  • Hotels and tour operators want your business. If you are considering a tour package, be sure the company is financially sound and well established. Know who you are dealing with before parting with your money.

By doing your research, you’ll ensure a positive experience for all involved. Bon voyage…

Aging in NJ – Home Health Care Help in New Jersey

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Focus Should Be on Slowing, Not Stopping, the Aging Process - Part 2 from September 5

Expert Home Care helps keep seniors and elders at home – safely & independently. Call us to find out how at (800) 848-2336.”Part of the problem with many individuals selling anti-aging medicines to the public is that they’re suggesting that because they can modify the risk of a particular disease they’re altering the aging process itself,” says Olshansky, senior research associate at the Center on Aging at the

University of Chicago and London School of Hygiene and Tropical Medicine.

But the key to a longer life is more than just evading diseases, researchers say. Until that mystery is unlocked, any anti-aging medication promising long life in a bottle or pill can deliver only that promises.

Hopeful Anti-Aging Research 
Researchers are a long way from creating a pill that can help you live a longer and healthier life, but they’re making progress.

“The hope is that we now have animal experimental systems in which aging really can be slowed and experiments that can get at the basic biology of aging and how it’s related to diseases,” says Richard Miller, MD, PhD, associate director for research at the University of Michigan’s geriatrics center. “Although we don’t know how those experiments will come out, and we don’t know what the answers are, we now have some really exciting things from which answers can reasonably be expected to emerge.”

NJ Seniors Unprepared for Retirement

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Many Seniors in New Jersey are Unprepared To Face the Future – What, me worry?

With life expectancy rising, Americans are facing retirement of 25 to 30 years or more. But many seniors are not financially or legally prepared for the future.

A lack of retirement planning is partly to blame. With Social Security benefits increasingly playing a smaller role in retirement funding, about 90 percent of people feel they will need to take on more responsibility for supporting their retirement, according to a recent survey by the American Council of Life Insurance (ACLI). However, only 44 percent of non-retirees say they are saving for retirement and are able to report how much.

A lack of planning is reflected in other areas as well. Currently, 57 percent of Americans don’t have a will — potentially leaving them without any say about their assets or the care of minor children after they die, reports legal Web site FindLaw. 

If someone dies without a will, their estate will be distributed according to a rigid legal formula and not as they may have wished. Legal experts advise anyone who is over the age of 18 and has assets, children or other dependants to create a will.

Call Expert Home Care when worried whether or not you can stay home comfortably. Please call 800-848-2336.